Today, I am going to be talking about a new rhythm and discipline that we have recently implemented into our home that I wish we would have done years ago – Monday Morning Meetings! My husband and I are very prayerful about what we bring into our homes and my husband has been wanting to bring in more rhythms and this meeting has been such a beautiful gift to our family! 

In the beginning, God gave Adam and Eve structure and this is a theme all throughout scripture. God is not a God of confusion but structure, order and discipline! With this in mind, our homes should be a reflection of our Heavenly Father. My husband and I try to ask ourselves, “How can we make our home a slice of Heaven (despite living in a fallen world)?” Or “ What ways can we emulate God and what He has done or said that we can take into our home?”. Children love and need boundaries. They love and need to know what is expected of them, what is acceptable, what is unacceptable, what will happen if certain things take place. Letting them know what YOU say is true, allowing your “yes” be “yes” and “no” be “no”. 

Our children are 5,4,2, and 6 months old and I wish we would have started these meetings years ago! What I am finding is that our toddler is already accustomed to it and is able to sit and participate. So, be encouraged, you do not need to have older kids to do this. Do expect a little push back though! You can use this as an opportunity to remind them to have a cheerful heart and to point them back to God’s word.

I am going to walk you through, what we do, some tips that I find helpful as well as what we hope these meetings will look like in the future!

WHAT WE DO

5-15 minute family meeting with the purpose of establishing structure, order and soundness in our home. 

Pray

We always begin by praying together! Following that we sing hymns or play some piano ( whatever my husband feels is necessary to start our time together!)

Praise One Another

This is a time to edify one another! So, we each take time to praise each family member and bring to light something they did over the past week that was encouraging or helpful etc.! We praise them in all areas! In their obedience, in their school work, in truth telling, when they confess something without us having us to ask, their chores, in all areas! This area has been SUPER convicting for me because it is so easy to get into correcting and teaching mood that we don’t even praise them for the 99 other amazing things they are ALREADY doing! Keep their spirits encouraged and speak LIFE over your children!

Pray for One Another

Similar to Praise, we write down something small each week, for each family member, that we can be praying for. For example, if your child is having a hard time telling the truth, you can pray that the Lord would help them have lips to speak the truth and the truth only. It does not have to be long and drawn out. Usually we will write one or two words down. The fruit has been so incredible from doing this. Maybe it is because we are writing it down, perhaps it is because we are all together but I do believe the accountability makes it feel different than if I were to instruct them on a random Tuesday. To finish our time of prayer, my husband will lay hands on our child and we both will pray for them.

Chores

Our children are responsible for chores in our home. So, this is the perfect time to let them know what they are responsible for during the upcoming week. As of late, we have just been telling our kids what their chore is but I have been recently testing out this board I got from Amazon to help them visually see what is expected of them.

Scripture Memory

Oftentimes we can underestimate our children’s ability to memorize scripture but how many songs do they have memorized? How many characters or books do they know like the back of their hand? My husband will write down our memory verse for that week and I will make a song out of it! You would be surprised how well they remember a verse when you put a tune to it. This ends up being the verse our kids practice writing for handwriting time during homeschool! We incorporate this verse in our home in many ways throughout the week. At the next meeting, before we learn our new memory verse, we repeat the previous weeks verse together to make sure we got it memorized.

Pray

We always finish the way we began our meeting- in prayer!

TIPS FOR HAVING A FAMILY MEETING

• I allow my children to have a special drink before our meetings! “Let’s make a yummy hot chocolate and put marshmallows in it before we start!” This helps them be excited and allows them to look forward to sitting down as a family

• We don’t all sit down until we are truly ready to start! I noticed when we sit down before we are ready, that it can be a little harder for the kids to stay focused. We try to make these meetings short to encourage as much participation as possible

• I noticed my toddler likes to fidget with things as we sit so I do like to give her something to hold during our meeting!

• During our meeting, we use a white board. We write down our praises, prayers and memory verse on this board. Once we are done, I take a picture and reference it throughout the week

• I try to give them something to look forward to after our meetings! “After we are done, we can go to the park!”

FUTURE MEETINGS

As our children get older, there are a handful of things I pray we are able to incorporate into our meetings!

• Reading a passage of scripture together and asking questions. Essentially having our own Bible study

• Talk about what is happening in the world, family, with our schedules

• Rhythm of repentance: I would love for this meeting to be an opportunity for our children to come to us about something that is bothering them, provoking them or something they feel could be changed. I pray it would feel like an open mic opportunity where they know our guards are down and we are all vulnerable during these meetings

I believe these are just the beginning of our meetings – I can’t wait to see what comes of it! If you have never tried anything like this, I really want to encourage you to because it really is beautiful. If you fix your eyes on Jesus and steward the gifts He has given to you and live a life where you desire to bring glory to God in every little thing – you will really see the fruit of it and He will be glorified!  

If you are interested, I have linked some videos/podcasts below that I believe can help you continue to have structure and order in your home!